February

The road program that I will work for in 2019 came together quite late, challenging sponsors and staff to work quickly.

The bike used for our spectacular team launch, timed to coincide with two Southern California bike events, was a small miracle in itself, assembled from another team’s equipment, some of last year’s components, and hopes and dreams.

I snuck over to the other coast for the last of the 2018/2019 PBMA Technical Workshops since we did not yet have enough frames and components to do serious work.

Since Tech Workshop, days have been long, gluing tubulars and building bikes. Honestly, the last pieces of the puzzle have yet to arrive. When they do, they have places ready for them.

My colleagues are managing the same scenario all over North America and the world. Some have already raced UCI races, some have already had team camp, but all are still working on organizing and building for the season proper. Shop mechanics will be emerging from winter projects and ramping up for Spring, new Mobile mechanics will be finishing background work on their marketing and their vehicles and hitting the road. Industry will be putting conferences behind them and gearing up booths for Sea Otter and other events. We hope to have stories from each category here.

For myself, team camp is about 10 days away. Riders, all of them new to the program, will get their home bikes for shakedown rides and will make final fit adjustments at camp or soon after. Measurements will be transferred to their race bikes, the first of which will have numbers attached one week later. Time trial fits are being done with each rider by experts from our bicycle sponsor at camp, so two mechanics will be on hand to make quick changes to position. The RV, truck, trailer, passenger van, and caravan cars went in caravan to the wrap installers, Birdworx, and will come back to the service course at the end of this week. These next days will fly by productively. Thank you for coming along.